[Closed] Farewell Old Lady of the Skies

I used to fly on "Paddy Zulu" (BA's London-Dharan 747) when working in Saudi. I still have the T Shirt - "It's much bigger than you think".

Here's one breaking the sound barrier 😉

Was just wondering if there was a thread on this!

Sad to see them retiring, even if they were getting long in the tooth! Nothing makes you feel quite as rockstar as going upstairs. On a plane. Yes, I know the 380 has upstairs, but it's not as exclusive.

Looking back, my last 747 flight was Philly to LHR. In 2A. A nice way to see them off.

350 and 787 are marvellous to fly, mind you. Dull, but so good in terms of noise, air pressure, fuel efficiency etc. Not as glamorous, sadly!

Here's one going for a burger. Was due to fly on one to San Diego next month but alas...

In 2A. A nice way to see them off

Couldn't resist could you!

I friend of mine in the know said that the 747 vs A380 was a bit of a standoff between Airbus and Boeing in a 'who would blink first' style - basically neither were making much in the way of profit or in much demand but neither companies wanted to admit defeat before the other.

As retro as it gets. Double Happiness is about right tho

😎

747 vs A380 was a bit of a standoff between Airbus and Boeing in a ‘who would blink first’ style – basically neither were making much in the way of profit or in much demand but neither companies wanted to admit defeat before the other.

Sounds about right. C19 has given both of them a slightly easier way out!

Although, I think BA may be bringing 380s back out of strorage, so maybe it's not all over yet.

Flown on quite a few, first time was '85 to Oz with Malaysian, as an 11 year old it was mind blowingly exciting. The more recent flights to the US weren't so comfortable and you could tell they were showing their age. Best of the lot though was top deck on a BA 747 from Perth to Singapore on way home after two years in Oz, days of curtain to the cockpit, mother of all thunderstorms over the Indian Ocean, brilliant.

Whilst it's a testament to a design that works, soon all airliners will just look like larger or smaller versions of the same thing.

3 engines, gone
T-tails, gone
Pointy mach 2, gone
4 engines, nearly gone

(Sure there are examples knocking around if you look worldwide like Air Papua IL-76, OK I made that one up)

3 and 4 engine were only to cover reliability requirements on long haul, new engines are good enough to use 2
T tails, structurally more complex I guess
Pointy mach 2 stuff, too expensive

But yes, airliners have all converged on to the same basic design pattern.

CaptainFlashheart
Member
Yes, I know the 380 has upstairs, but it’s not as exclusive.

It really wasn't exclusive on the BA 380 I was on - I was sat in First (my only time ever) and that was downstairs 🙂

I've only ever flown one 747 - Heathrow to Singapore years ago but something about that shape that just made it feel exciting / special. It'll be a shame not to see them around the place.

Flew plenty of them, cattle class. I for one won't miss those LHR-SIN jumps with no leg space (and I'm only 5'9") or seats that won't recline thanks to the bulkhead they were hard up against. BA squeezed everything they could out of those just to upsell from conditions that would be illegal for livestock.

Last one I flew on was back from Miami, with BA, and it was a complete shed compared to the American Airlines 777 that we flew out on (I think it was a 777 anyway).

Noisy & uncomfortable compared to modern jets.

One of a kind? Absolutely..

But missed? Nah, not really. I used to do LHR/SFO quite regularly & much preferred the Airbus. Soooo much quieter!

I guessing scuttler has linked some photos on his first 3 posts, but I can't see them, not even the grey no-entry sign which sometimes happens at work. Anyone else??

Boarding across a windowless skybridge and heading straight up the stairs made it feel like you'd boarded a biz-jet. Wonderful. Vastly preferable to the cavernous business cabin of an A380 or the awful cattle pen of business on a BA777. Truly beautiful bird, too. Genuinely sad that my Children will never get to fly on one.

Genuinely sad that my Children will never get to fly on one.

Don't know how old your children are, but there will likely still be some 747s in service somewhere in the world for 15+ years

In the true spirit of all aviation threads on here I thought it needed pics.I linked directly to the jpgs but airliners.net must have a cookie mechanism to stop direct linking. Regardless, the photos were these

Sound Barrier - https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Airways/Boeing-747-436/979746/L
Burgers - https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Airways/Boeing-747-436/1148891/L
Double Happiness Retro Classic - https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Asia-Airways/Boeing-747-436/1005859/L

I'm not sure anyone operates 747 passenger flights from UK now. Maybe Air China have one route? Not an impossibility to fly on one, but the chances are vanishingly small. I doubt any will be operating for passengers by the time either of my kids are adults.

Sound Barrier – https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Airways/Boeing-747-436/979746/L
Burgers – https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Airways/Boeing-747-436/1148891/L
Double Happiness Retro Classic – https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Asia-Airways/Boeing-747-436/1005859/L

Great photos. Kai Tak approach in a 747 was something my Father got to experience. Very jealous.

Are there any good documentaries available on the streaming services about the 747, I recall a couple of programs last year but cannot remember what they were called. I meant to show them to my daughter.

BBC ran one called Jumbo: The Plane that Changed the World. It was very good but doesn't appear to be on iPlayer at the moment. I expect BA's announcement may precipitate a rerun though.

Before CV Virgin were flying 747 400s out of Manchester to Florida. Haven't seen one since.

I have wonderful exciting memories as a child, of seeing the first 747 come into 'Ringway'. We lived under the flight path. The sky went grey and the noise of this beast was amazing.

I have wonderful exciting memories as a child, of seeing the first 747 come into ‘Ringway’. We lived under the flight path. The sky went grey and the noise of this beast was amazing.

I remember when I was a kid probably early/mid eighties when Qantas were flying 747s into Ringway and they had an open day where you got bussed onto the tarmac from car park and then up the front steps, through and out the back. Mega!

Then there was the time (probably same era) that NASA sent their 747... OMFG! I got a day off school for that.

No way that 747 is going through the sounds barrier like that. It is creating a loud of condensation in the low pressure area though.

I'm going to miss them. I grew up with my dad flying 707, 747 and then 747-400 so I've spent plenty of time on them.

We lived in SE London as kids and the area is on the flight path for Heathrow. 6pm every night was Concorde, that was always epic. But back then, everything flying across the Atlantic was a 4-engine for ETOPS reasons. So Jumbo's were a really common sight. There was something magical about seeing a massive plane seemingly moving so slowly but staying up there.

My Dad has flown on them loads. I've only ever been on one on the ground.

Genuinely sad that my Children will never get to fly on one.

What, so they could say "weren't old fashioned planes a bit rubbish compared to modern ones, Daddy?"

Boarding across a windowless skybridge and heading straight up the stairs made it feel like you’d boarded a biz-jet. Wonderful. Vastly preferable to the cavernous business cabin of an A380 or the awful cattle pen of business on a BA777.

This is true. Especially in one of the easy entry window seats. 62A/K, 64A. Those window lockers for storage, and as a booze shelf. Perfect!

However, for the majority of passengers, down the back, the 380, 350 and 78s are much, much better.

Are there any good documentaries available on the streaming services about the 747, I recall a couple of programs last year but cannot remember what they were called. I meant to show them to my daughter.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p041byzm/tuesday-documentary-jumbo

Very old one but interesting.
If you have National Geographic channel, keep an eye on that, they do loads of really good documentaries on all sorts of subjects but aviation features quite highly. And as @Tallpaul says, if you can find that Jumbo: The Plane That Changed the World, it's brilliant.

Edit: it's on Youtube:

What, so they could say “weren’t old fashioned planes a bit rubbish compared to modern ones, Daddy?”

Then you take em to Bristol or Manchester to see Concorde and watch their faces fall off (until you go inside and they say “weren’t old fashioned planes a bit rubbish compared to modern ones, Daddy?”) 😉

No way that 747 is going through the sounds barrier like that. It is creating a loud of condensation in the low pressure area though.

Yeah soz may have missed the smiley off. Point is it's a cracking picture of a BA 747 in a blink-of-an-eye pose that is more apt for a US fighter jet hooning past an aircraft carrier.

747 isn't 'rubbish' compared to modern aircraft. It's not as efficient and the way the global airline network has evolved is no longer the right tool for the job, but at the end of the day you can put the same interior into a 30 year old jumbo as you have in the latest 787/A380/A350 and that is the product that the passenger feels and experiences.

In fact the jumbo is still the fastest flying passenger aircraft going and other more modern aircraft have to move out of its way during flights.

Sad to see them go but nothing lasts forever and the big jumbo's are operating in a network that doesn't play to their strengths. Only a small number of airlines can make the big jumbo's work, like Emirates and BA, but they are standing down their older less efficient aircraft post covid.

Before CV Virgin were flying 747 400s out of Manchester to Florida. Haven’t seen one since.

Luckily we went upstairs out, and down stairs back to Barbados last Autumn.  A much better experience in the Virgin plane than the BA one with a very tardy interior we found ourselves on to Vancouver in 2018.

One for the kids to remember they loved being upstairs on a plane, and we have photos of them in the Pilots seats  at the controls with hats on at Grantley Adams.

Flown LHR-PHL dozens of times. I always try and ride the Jumbo out. In January I checked the date of retirement of the one I was on, October this year. They’ve just brought forward their plan, but not by much.

Had a great chat with the purser in his “office” under the stairs. Crew loved them.

I once flew Osaka to Tokyo in an ANA 747, I mean it was part of a longer trip, but it must have been one of the shortest scheduled flights for a 747, it wasn't a stop-over or anything, that's just what it did, flew mostly Japanese Business guys from Osaka to Tokyo and then came back again.

It took longer to get on the plane than it too to fly it never really levelled out, it went up, it came down and that was about it. As part of a pretty surreal 2 days in Japan for a returning back-packers with 3 cigarettes and AUS 50c to his name it still stood out. Even though I'd been bumped to 'Business Class' for the whole trip, that was the one and only time I got to go on the top deck of a 747.

I did Austin to LHR last year upstairs in the 747 and it was ace. Proper bucket list as if never been upstairs in one.

Not a passenger carrying derivative, but the NASA SOFIA 747, is something of a technical miracle.

A former girlfriend’s father was a NASA infra red astronomer who designed an instrument on the telescope. He was everything you’d hope a NASA boffin would be.

I met them cycling in Oregon ten years ago. He was in his late seventies then and he rode his bike every day. One of his Thursday breakfast and biking buddies was the Nobel prizewinning inventor of the laser.

Ed had a second bad accident crashing whilst riding following a suspected heart attack. He’s been in hospital since the beginning of the lockdown. Hoping he pulls through

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/overview/index.html

There's a few on the runway at Cardiff ready to be decommissioned

Flew on a BA 747 to Denver a while back, and it was showing it's age TBH, very tatty round the edges, non working TVs, seats that didn't recline, rubbish air con and really noisy. Won't miss them.

I was pretty lucky to work on them when I was an apprentice in Lhr in the late 90s . Minor checks so changing a few wheels and brakes , engine filters then take them outside and run the engines , at 18 I thought it was the best thing ever . I’ve been around aeroplanes for a while now and thought I didn’t really have any attachment to them as it’s become just a job now but I did feel a hint of sadness at the news this morning.

Never actually flown in one but the science museum in London has a cross-section of a fuselage and it's even bigger than it looks. The feeling when your little airbus parks beside one is always pretty cool

3/4 of my flights on 747s, I was seated in 64A, was brilliant, felt like as close as I’ll get to being on a private jet.

The 4th was in 64B, thanks to BA cocking up. A poor relation to 64A, especially as I was facing the person who ‘stole’ my seat 😤

The A380 is better in most ways, but just lacks something special, IMO

It’s the only one (not including cargo) with the cockpit upstairs - I have no idea why, but I reckon that’s a big part of why they seem to have something other planes don’t

I have fond if hazy memories of flying the Atlantic in a B747 in the 70s ss a child. In those innocent days the crew would let children come up to the flight deck and ride the jump seat for a while when established in cruise.

My only other B747 flight wad economy class to ****stan, not so good when you are a (small) adult.

Lots of recent experience of A380 travel, better than B747 in every way but lacking in character 🙁.

I worked on the engines for both the B787 and A350 but have yet to fly in either type. I hear that they are both good rides and really want to fly in one or both. I avoid personal flying for tree hugging reasons but before C19 did lots of long haul for work, hopefully less in the future. ✈

Mashr,
The B747 flight deck is 'upstairs' to allow for a hinged cargo loading nose. The aircraft was designed for cargo.